EPA
Caught BUYING It’s “Independent” Science Advisers - California Political
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EPA Caught BUYING It’s “Independent” Science Advisers
May
22, 2016 By Stephen Frank 3
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At the mere cost of $190 million dollars, of taxpayers
funds, the Environmental Protection Agency has bought its independent
advisers. That is the amount of payoffs, in the forms of “grants” to its
advisers, to assure the results are what the ideologues want from the
studies. In fact, ALL such decisions based on these advisers were bought
and paid for—illegal under the law. This is fraud, embezzlement and
corruption. Then did you expect different from government?
Believe a government financed “independent” study at your peril, your wallet and your job. How bad is this corruption—when a UCLA professor, James Engstrom exposed it, UCLA—the beneficiary of the payments and corruption fired him—for the crime of exposing crime. Think you are proud of UCLA?
“A free market legal group is suing the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) for allegedly stacking a scientific advisory panel on
air pollution with researchers who had received more than $190 million in grants
from the agency.
The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (EELI) is
suing EPA on behalf of the Western States Trucking Association and Dr. James
Enstrom, a retired University of California-Los Angeles epidemiologist who was
blacklisted for challenging EPA claims about particulate matter.”
The university/government cabal has stolen from the public,
destroyed honest science and made studies produced by government as valuable as
used toilet paper.
Anybody angry yet?
Michael Bastasch, Daily Caller, 5/17/16
A free market legal group is suing the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) for allegedly stacking a scientific advisory panel on
air pollution with researchers who had received more than $190 million in grants
from the agency.
The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (EELI) is
suing EPA on behalf of the Western States Trucking Association and Dr. James
Enstrom, a retired University of California-Los Angeles epidemiologist who was
blacklisted for challenging EPA claims about particulate matter.
“The EPA has stacked the panel, which is required by law to
be independent and unbiased, with researchers who have received over $190
million in discretionary grants from the EPA,” said Steve Milloy, an attorney
with EELI, in a statement.
“This clearly violates the law and makes a mockery of the
notion of ‘independent’ scientific review,” he said.
The EPA relies on a panel of scientific advisers,
called the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, to validate the science
underlying key clean air regulations pushed by the agency. In this case, EELI is asking the court to prevent the EPA from convening a
panel tasked with reviewing the science
behind agency regulations on fine particulate matter, or
PM2.5.
EELI believes the agency has stacked the panel with
researchers who will rubber stamp EPA rules regulating PM2.5. EPA also relies on
claimed PM2.5 reductions for the majority of health benefits in some of its
largest regulations on power plants.
Some 24 of the 26 members of EPA’s PM2.5 panel have gotten
or are the current recipients of EPA grants. In total, panel members have gotten
more than $190 million from the agency, according to EELI. Milloy says this
violates the federal laws requiring such scientific advisory panels be
“independent.”
EELI isn’t alone in pointing out potential problems with
using scientific advisers financially reliant on EPA. Earlier this year,
Oklahoma Republican pointed out that many science panel members were often
peer-reviewing regulations based on their own research, corroding the integrity
of the peer-review process.
“Not only does the EPA pay researchers to produce
controversial research that advances its PM2.5 regulatory agenda, but the agency
pays the very same researchers to review their own controversial work,” said
Milloy, who also runs the blog JunkScience.com and has been involved in the PM2.5
debate for years.
EPA began regulating PM2.5 in in the early 1990s, and today
says there’s no safe level of exposure to the air pollutant. PM2.5 is a “mixture
of harmful solid and liquid particles” that is 2.5 microns or less, or “1/30th
the thickness of a human hair.” These small particles can get into people’s
respiratory system and can harm human health and even lead to death after just
short-term exposure, according to EPA.
In 2011, former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told
Congress that PM2.5 “causes premature death.”
“It doesn’t make you sick. It’s directly causal to dying
sooner than you should,” she said. “If we could reduce particulate matter to
healthy levels it would have the same impact as finding a cure for cancer in our
country.”
The EPA set PM2.5 primary standards at 15 micrograms
per cubic meter of air on an annual average basis. Despite the strong
warnings, EPA has tested PM2.5 on humans. EPA exposed dozens of human test subjects to PM levels of 600
micrograms per cubic meter — 40 times what the EPA sets as an acceptable outdoor
air standard.
EPA not only testes PM2.5 on humans, they also did not
fully disclose the risks of death from PM2.5 exposure — a reversal from public
warnings about exposure to the pollutant.
EELI points out EPA uses supposed monetary benefits from
PM2.5 reductions as the main justification for massive regulations on power
plants, including the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, Mercury Air Transport
Standard and Clean Power Plan.
“The EPA process for commissioning and evaluating PM2.5
research has been so rigged and so biased for so long that many scientists don’t
even try to get nominated for CASAC panels any more,” Milloy said. “
“We will review and respond to the lawsuit,” an EPA
spokeswoman told the Daily Caller New Foundation.
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